


practice makes perfect

by smallcuts



Series: two sides of the same coin [1]
Category: American Housewife (TV)
Genre: Awkward Crush, Boys In Love, Canon Divergence, M/M, Practice Kissing, Season/Series 03, oliver is one dumb mf lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-26
Updated: 2020-11-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 07:41:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27729676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallcuts/pseuds/smallcuts
Summary: It’s not the kind of sentence that begs an answer. Westport’s not the kind of town that encourages boys to desire anything other than the skinny, cute girls that populated their school. Cooper’s not the type of boy to kiss Oliver.Except when he does.
Relationships: Cooper Bradford/Oliver Otto
Series: two sides of the same coin [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2028349
Comments: 5
Kudos: 51





	practice makes perfect

**Author's Note:**

> hi i wrote this literally the second after i finished that halloween episode because HELLO?? fellas is it gay to practice intimate loving gestures with your homie????
> 
> working on a follow up from cooper's pov because shit do i love that boy

Never in his Johnny Diamond book of quotes did it tell him to accept the advice of a few random Google queries when it comes to the merits of groundbreaking life decisions. As hard as it is to admit that his idol possibly doesn’t have the answer to everything like he hoped, Johnny Diamond can only bring someone so far and it seems Mr. Diamond drew his advice-giving line at relationship advice. Henceforth, the reason why Oliver wishes he could’ve told the Oliver of yesterday to lick a used tissue or pay some kid with the flu to sneeze on him because as of three hours ago: He’s agreed to show up to a party where he’s expected to spend seven minutes in a closet with his girlfriend. Seven minutes of what exactly? He doesn’t know. _He doesn’t know._

Cooper smiles at him, startling the shorter boy back to reality with an alarmed jolt. “Found something here that says not to get too handsy, don’t want to scare the little lady off,” he states, waving his phone around. Oliver crosses his arms and moves to sit at his desk. The post-it note he taped to his laptop earlier greets him: ‘If you obsess over whether you are making the right decision, you are assuming that the universe will reward you for one thing and punish you for another.” He had intended for it to be motivational but the note sparks a feeling of unease deep in the pit of his stomach.

“So what then? I sit in a closet with Gina and kiss her a little for seven minutes? How is that any different than just kissing her outside of a closet?” Oliver feels a twinge of annoyance thrum through him at the notion that something as excruciatingly mundane as swapping spit in a closet was making him this nervous.

“It’s not just kissing. And closed spaces I guess? Ugh,” Cooper pockets his phone and hums to himself, eyes flicking towards the ceiling—a quirk that indicates Cooper’s frustrated with something. Oliver hums to prompt his friend into speaking, which he does after an exaggerated sigh.

“I was just thinking, and it’s dumb-“

“Yeah, not a good sign when you think-“

“Shut up!” Cooper slugs him in the arm and resumes, snaking his open palm down to one of the pens scattered across Oliver’s unkempt desk. “We’ve been looking stuff up for like, an hour! News flash amigo, Google is shit.”

“Right, I suppose you’re just _brimming_ with good ideas though,” says Oliver flatly. That earns him a harder punch to his previously abused arm and though he tries valiantly, his body still betrays him and he lets out a quiet hiss of pain.

“If you’d let me finish, remember that saying? Practice makes perfect,” Cooper flashes him another one of those Bradford-patented pearly white smiles, one that never fails to make Oliver feel like he’s glimpsed too long at the sun. His breath catches in his throat.

“Sure, I know that quote.” He replies slowly, searching Cooper’s eyes for… what, exactly? He’s not sure.

“Glad we’re on the same page bro,” Cooper smirks, unknowingly stoking a frenzy of half-formed questions in the web of his thoughts. The same page? He hardly believes they’re even in the same novel right now. Interrogating Cooper only leads to more unanswerable questions, however, and Oliver can’t claim to have the patience to solve the riddle of Cooper’s logic today. He’s a successful mountebank in the making, albeit one that doesn’t know what to do with his girlfriend in a cramped closet tomorrow night.

Oliver jumps at the unexpected contact of Cooper’s cold fingers wrapped around his wrist. The boy’s eyebrows are raised, one thumb jerking towards Oliver’s pitifully small closet. The reality of the situation clicks into place so fast it nearly gives him whiplash. “You- we…”

He abandons his train of thought abruptly, traipsing behind Cooper and wondering what ‘practice’ entails. Maybe he misread the story here. Cooper kicks his shin lightly, prompting Oliver to squint at his best friend. The door is mostly shut, with a few sparse beams of artificial light bleaching through the slats of his closet to aid Oliver’s vision. He closes his eyes, uncomfortably aware of the sudden proximity between him and his best friend.

“Don’t freak out,” is the last thing Oliver hears before his thoughts and body take a vacation to the backseat of whatever part of his brain normally enables him to function as a human being. Because then there’s a large, clammy (not warm like Gina’s hands are) hand planted firmly on Oliver’s hip and the lingering smell of the pine-scented cologne Cooper insisted on dowsing himself with at the beginning of each day invading his nostrils and _has his throat always felt this constricted-_.

The hand—Cooper’s hand, his mind helpfully reminds him—slithers up under his shirt and halts an inch beneath the center of his scapula. Oliver’s eyes fly open, mouth parted in a silent ‘o’. Cooper’s eyes are still shuttered, allowing Oliver one moment to gather his bearings before he’s launched back into the line of fire. What life decisions had he carried out that have led to him getting _slightly_ weak in the knees by his best friend employing an action as innocent as skirting his hands across Oliver’s back? He stops thinking again once he catches sight of a small wet tongue peeking out to moisten Cooper’s lips. It’s a coincidence that his breathing screeches to a halt too, it really is. The name Gina blares around his head like a tsunami alarm.

Cooper shifts so that his forehead is pressed into the curve of Oliver’s collarbone. His hand stills, then mimics a motion Oliver doesn’t understand as he exhales softly. Oliver shivers involuntarily, think of Gina Gina _Gina-_.

“Unhooked your bra,” whispers Cooper, giggling as he straightened himself up and out of Oliver’s personal bubble. Oliver gapes at him for what seems like an eternity, remaining frozen in place even as Cooper shoulders past him out of his cramped closet. His skin feels white-hot where Cooper had left fleeting touches on him, the previous Gina mantra hurtling around his skull fusing together with how shiny Cooper’s lips had looked in the poor lighting the closet door provided. “All right there, hombre?”

With Herculean effort, Oliver swallows his emotional turmoil down with a charming (or what he sincerely hopes will pass off as charming) smile and exits the closet. A fresh of breath air- had he thought that right? Fresh air wasn’t doing him any favors. Oliver ignores anything pouring out of Cooper’s mouth at the moment, too ashamed to entertain the minute, tiny, slight possibility that he had- well, what had he done? He had no idea what that was or what he was experiencing. His pounding heart was a great indicator that it was something _bad_. So much for not freaking out.

He hadn’t registered Cooper leaving the room at all until an unnaturally bright pink bra was thrust harshly into his face. “What the fuck.” Oliver says instinctively.

“Wanna do me next?” Cooper replies slyly, throwing in a playful wink. Under normal circumstances, Oliver would have huffed a laugh and told him to knock it off. In these circumstances, Oliver is half-tempted to- to what? What were they doing?

“Huh?” says Oliver dumbly. He’s in recovery from whatever had (could have) gone down in his closet. The undercurrent of Gina’s running through his stream of consciousness was the only tangible thought he kept clinging to as Cooper slid the bra he stole on, then helped Oliver into the other undergarment.

“Come on, doesn’t practice make perfect?” Cooper’s suddenly too close again. Goddamn pine cologne, he can’t focus on visualizing Gina when mementos of his best friend are plastered among every crevice of his primary senses. “For fuck’s sake-“ Oliver freezes as Cooper roughly yanks Oliver’s arm up and repositions it to hover over the lacy exterior of his borrowed bra.

Oliver exhales unsteadily and strives to remove the bra from his friend. Tries again. And again. He can’t tell if he’s fumbling due to general anxiety or if it’s because Cooper’s so warm but by the fifth attempt, he’s choking down a mortifying, strangled cry.

Cooper wordlessly hoists Oliver’s other hand to his back, effectively ensnaring them in an odd semi-hug. Standing this near to him deals Oliver a harsh reminder that Cooper’s got a handful of annoying inches on him. “Man, can you hear that?”

Oliver’s heart stops. Was Cooper miraculously able to hear his heartbeat? He stifles a nervous laugh, what would Cooper say if he could?

“It’s the sound of Gina snoring after that total snoozefest of seven minutes.”

He could hardly believe he had let Cooper affect his mood this much in the first place. He was still Oliver’s idiot of a best friend.

“Piss off,” Oliver laughs as he detaches himself from Cooper. “You’re not gonna do anything better than that with Whatsername either.”

“Is that what you think?” Cooper is laughing as well but the gleam in his ordinarily mirthful eyes contradicts his inflection.

“Well...”

“Actually, I’m going to show Adriana a better time.”

A sour taste nestles itself in the back of Oliver’s throat. “Are you?” He doesn’t intend for his question to come out as tinged with venom as it does, and from the way Cooper’s eyes widen, Oliver must have caught him off guard.

“Yeah.” A step adjoining him, the establishment of eye contact. Oliver immediately feels trapped—oh god, he hopes this isn’t how the closet will be—“Don’t freak out.”

A new wave of panic unleashes itself in the confines of Oliver’s chest. All he can do is stand in its wake as Cooper trails his fingers along Oliver’s jawline, idly curling stray hands of hair once they settle into their destination circa the nape of his neck. Did Johnny Diamond ever happen to publish a book, perhaps a paper on what to do when you believe you might be the tiniest bit attracted to your best friend? He couldn’t recall. Cooper’s lips part and Oliver forces himself to quell the unattractive deer-in-headlights look adorning his features. “For the first three minutes, I’m just gonna kiss her. Take it slow, ya dig? Let her chase me,” he leans in until they’re separated by what can’t be more than two inches. Oliver’s momentarily captivated, left to wallow in his own cross-eyed confusion as he watches Cooper’s lips dance in and out of focus, melding and breaking apart.

Cooper clears his throat and removes his hand, staring peculiarly at it. He misses the way Oliver’s face tipped forward, pursuing his withdrawal. “A-and then… I’ll get her bra off.” Cooper gnaws on his lip and unfastens the bra looped around Oliver’s shoulders with the speed of a herd of cheetahs. Oliver’s throat tightens. “That’d buy another minute, and I guess then I’m planning to...”

“Planning to?” asks Oliver breathlessly. For a second, a short second but a second nonetheless, he considered seriously that Cooper intended to kiss him. He’s terrified. So terrified. Also a little turned on. Fuck, Gina…

But Oliver ultimately wouldn’t have shoved Cooper off. He’s aware that beneath the well-hidden layers of insecurity and snark, he would have let Cooper have whatever he imagined. In that split second, Gina was an afterthought. The past feeling of unease in his stomach returned fully intact with a fresh serving of anxiety the longer Cooper continued to level his unreadable expression at him.

“Planning to… play. Um, with her boobs.” Cooper falters, running a nervous hand through his bangs. “I think that’s what you’re supposed to do.” Cue a fake cough into the inner part of his elbow.

Oliver resolutely creates a mental checklist of every action he and Cooper had partaken in today so as to ensure they never wound up in a weird situation akin to this one again. It’s instantly sorted into the “Memories To Erase When I’m Rich Enough To Afford That Type of Surgery” folder but the forlorn look in Cooper’s eyes overrides any mental computation Oliver had been wrapping up.

Oliver means to check verbally if he’s okay, or change the subject entirely because this afternoon has been far too _confusing_ , but what tumbles out of his mouth instead is: “But you’ve never done anything like that. With, uh, with anyone.”

Under Cooper’s scrutiny, he’s transported back to that caged animal feeling. If he took _anything_ away from this experience, it’s that he sorely needs to improve his conversational skills. A businessman should never be at this severe of a loss of words.

“Yeah? What’s your point?”

Oliver opens his mouth, then snaps it closed. He repeats this useless process a couple of times, floundering for an answer he himself didn’t have. “Isn’t that… why we’re doing this?” His words were usually so well-rehearsed, spliced from a smattering of entrepreneurs he idolized. “B-because practice makes perfect…” he finishes lamely.

Cooper’s eyes narrow in suspicion, causing Oliver to tamper down the pesky urge to either flee his room or pounce on his best friend. The constant hammering of Gina’s name had nearly vanished from his brain, replaced with the jittery feeling of adrenaline. The torture of pretense.

“I said that,” Cooper states thoughtfully. It’s not the kind of sentence that begs an answer. Westport’s not the kind of town that encourages boys to desire anything other than the skinny, cute girls that populated their school. Cooper’s not the type of boy to kiss Oliver.

He heavily regrets ever implying anything that could blur the borderlines of platonic intimacy in the first place.

But then Cooper’s crowding his space again, and he raises his (quaking, notes Oliver) hands to rest on Oliver’s shoulders. “For practice.” He nudges their foreheads together.

Oliver exhales a mute, fluttering breath, allowing his eyes to slip shut. He tries to picture Gina in her leotard, how her smile shone radiantly in the afterglow of all of those Tangled-themed lanterns he and his family had surprised her with on the day of their disastrous first date. It’s quite hard to do so when the scent of pine so readily intoxicated him, when he could more easily replicate in his mind’s eye the side profile of Cooper’s megawatt grin aimed at nothing in particular as they cruised down the streets of Westport. “For practice,” he mumbles back, although the hollow ache in his chest doesn’t agree.

When their lips finally touch, Oliver expects there to be a spark. At the very least, a sign that technically cheating on his girlfriend with his best friend wasn’t the worst possible course of action he could have chosen. Instead, he feels, with a sense of dread, as though he’s unlocked a key arc in the storyline of Cooper and Oliver. Kissing him isn’t as disconcerting as he led himself to take as gospel truth because he believes subconsciously that maybe, just maybe, Cooper wasn’t meant to be tied to the sole role of best friend.

It’s underwhelming and overwhelming all at once. Overwhelming because they had crossed a boundary, because he cheated on his girlfriend, because Oliver thinks kissing Cooper defined a couple of thoughts that hadn’t come to fruition in his head yet while the other boy is just scoring free practice out of him. It hurts. But Cooper hasn’t pulled away and Oliver refuses to be the first one to shut this down now that they’ve dove headfirst into metaphorical shark-infested waters.

The atmosphere shifts when Cooper licks a hesitant line along Oliver’s bottom lip. They’re briefly stunned; Cooper’s grip tightens on him. Oliver pinpoints this as the exact moment in time when he tossed all of his self-questioning out the window in favor of—he wishes he could claim he acted in a more dignified manner but he honestly had all the grace of a starving caveman—weaving his fingers through Cooper’s short locks and deepening the kiss. Cooper licks his lip again, eliciting a small grunt and a parting of his lips; This is officially further than he’d ever gone with Gina. Just when Oliver thinks they’re seriously about to begin frenching, a loud throat-clearing emanates from his doorway.

Oliver and Cooper, with a high-pitched yelp, sprang apart from each other. His mom and dad, of all fucking people in this household, standing there with highly contrasted expressions of smugness from the former and disbelief from the latter is not what he wanted to see this afternoon. Or ever.

“M-Mrs. O! Mr. O! Buenas noch- I mean tardes- Buenos tardes!” Cooper stammers out after it’s exceedingly obvious that Oliver wasn’t planning on speaking up.

“You mean buenas, Cooper,” Greg replies after another short period of silence.

“We were-“

“Oh, save it.” Katie cuts Cooper off as she strides to the farther side of the bedroom, pinching Oliver’s cheek. “I knew there was a reason to save that mother-son gay cruise pamphlet! Oliver, honey, don’t even try to fight me on it.”

“But he-“ Oliver scowls at Cooper, who offers no help of his own, electing instead to study his nail beds as if they possessed the answers to life. “We aren’t.”

“Just an FYI, don’t think that just because you’re a gay couple means you’re exempt from the bedroom door rule. You are _no_ different than Taylor and Trip. Why didn’t you tell us that you broke up with Gina though, I liked her.”

A part of Oliver suffers instant death and another part of him breathes a sigh of relief. Inappropriate to be feeling certainly but there are much worse outcomes he can concoct in his head of this particular scenario. He’d gladly take overbearing, embarrassing Katie over homophobic Katie any day of the week. There’s not a single explanation he can even think of to start with, however, and his dad’s speculative glances between him and Cooper are freaking him out further.

“S-sorry Mrs. O. We weren’t ready is all,” states Cooper meekly. Oliver’s quick to tilt his head and send him a questioning glance but Cooper’s eyes are steadfastly trained to the stained carpeting at the soles of his feet. Oliver banishes another irritating urge to kiss the worry lines off his friend’s face. It was just supposed to be practice for Gina. The lovely, sweet, frankly bitchy at times but cute, Gina that he was supposed to spend seven minutes in heaven with tomorrow. Except now that he’s gotten in some practice with Cooper, he’s not so sure how he’s going to feel actually taking off her bra and touching her, of leaning in to kiss her and not smelling that dumb pine cologne Cooper seriously needs to wear less of.

“The door stays fully open,” hisses Katie sternly as she bestows them both the ‘I’m watching you’ expression. As soon as his parents wander away up the hall, Katie talking her husband’s ear off with potential itineraries for that cruise, Oliver winces at Cooper. His expression is returned in earnest.

“We weren’t ready?” questions Oliver at the same time Cooper inquires about the mother-son pamphlet.

“Sorry, panicked,” says Cooper sheepishly. Oliver rolls his eyes in lieu of a response.

“... What uh…” Deep breath in, deep breath out. Calm thoughts. His future 401(k). All the yachts money can buy. Cooper smiling at him from one, waving him aboard with a casual flick of the wrist. Cooper laughing at a joke he cracked on their way to school, the sun reflecting off his golden hair in a way that can’t be legal. Oliver’s heart thumps painfully in his chest. “What are we doing? What are we going to do?”

Cooper doesn’t answer. He doesn’t answer for thirty seconds, which stretches into a minute and forty seconds, which stretches into three minutes of one of the most tortuous silences Oliver has ever experienced. Cooper leering at him from that yacht, calling him a slur as he sailed off into the horizon, Cooper driving to school with his arm around some other boy who didn’t start harboring unwanted feelings for him like Oliver had, the sickening crunch of gravel Cooper’s speedy departure left in their dust.

“Hey,” Cooper snaps his fingers and gestures to Oliver’s empty bed. They sit down while Oliver pretends to examine one of his walls with all the finesse of an interior designer. “We’re not making this weird. We’re Oliver and Cooper, best buds forever!” He gives Oliver’s bicep a good-natured shove. Cooper’s words are meant to be reassuring, he knows. He also knows that he may have gotten in over his head with this entire practice ordeal. However the circumstances are framed, he’s finding it frightfully hard to reel all of his recently uncovered emotions in and lock them into the repression file cabinet right now. He compromises on staring blankly at the drywall—perhaps if he doesn’t break his gaze, Cooper will say something different or Oliver will be magically transported anywhere but in this godforsaken house with him.

“Buds,” Oliver finally mutters. Cooper frowns and flops onto his back with a flourished groan. He forces Oliver to follow suit, rearranging them until Cooper has wormed his arm underneath and around Oliver’s shoulders and he’s stuck his chin on top of Oliver’s head.

Oliver rolls over sideways and coils into his friend’s chest, making sure his face is fully concealed in the safety of his duvet before he allows a few tears to gather in the corner of his eyes. He wouldn’t let them fall of course, but… he doesn’t even know why he’s crying. There’s no logical reason to. He has Gina, his girlfriend. He has Cooper, his best friend. And he has a solid, if not infuriating family. He was going to be rich.

Oliver’s vision rapidly blurs. He wouldn’t let them fall of course…

“Bet the girls are gonna be super amazed tomorrow,” Cooper says in what was likely meant to be a tone of excitement but it enters the world reeking of flat and sarcastic connotations. Oliver squeezes his eyes shut as tightly as he can manage and paces his breathing to match the steady drumbeat within Cooper’s ribcage, ignoring the stray tears he’d simply have to wipe away when Cooper was unaware. “Buuut…”

“But what?” asks Oliver.

“I think, I think that I could,” he shoots up abruptly, jerking Oliver’s head off of his chest. “Wait, you good?”

“Must be allergies,” replies Oliver crossly. He sniffles his nose and swipes at it for extra pizzazz. “Continue.”

“I was only going to say that, and _only_ if you’re cool with it. You’d have to be. But I’m also not forcing you.”

Oliver wishes he could understand what the actual hell Cooper is talking about right now but he’s confident they are in two very different hemispheres of the planet right now. “Spit it out, jesus.” He doesn’t mean to come off as rude but exhaustion from today’s events was beginning to seep in. He barely grasped anything about anything right now.

“I could use more practice,” implies Cooper slowly. Pointedly. Oliver swears he gave himself whiplash from the sheer speed he turned around to get his friend’s entire profile in view. “Not forcing you. Just saying.” The manner in which Cooper expresses himself is matter-of-fact as if they were having an idyllic chat about the weather instead of the nature of their relationship, yet the tips of Cooper’s ears are tinged pink. The sight of him brings a minuscule smirk to Oliver’s face.

“I- yeah. Yeah, me too.”

“Yeah?” Cooper asks, searching Oliver for any hint of miscommunication. Oliver merely smiles in full force.

“Yeah.” And he leans in.


End file.
